EA Radio Episode # 10 - Day Tripping Vs. City Hopping

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Day Tripping Vs. City Hopping (Show Transcript)

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[Applause] [Music] hey hello everybody this is scott from extraordinary adventures again you're listening to the 10th episode of EA radio we're joined again by my extraordinary wife Laura hello and today she and I are going to discuss date tripping versus city hopping so you wanted to find what date tripping versus city hopping is well date tripping is it when you stay at one location and you go to a different site every day like you take a travel here two or three hours to get to a place versus city hopping is you travel to a place and you stay there and you don't return to your home location so it's sequential you go from one place to the next place to the next in a sequence correct so like when we were in Germany and we went to Berlin the man with the garment went to Munich then we went to we just kept going at different towns and in between them we made some little day trips correct whereas day-tripping would be lets say you stayed in Dublin and then just with the coast and then went up to Belfast and you just went everywhere out of your home base you know and then always returned to Dublin yeah over over to sleep so today we're going to talk about benefits of both strategies the first thing I think we should talk about is if you're going to stay in a place whether you're gonna day trip or whether you're going to go sequentially from one to the next is there a minimum amount of time that you should stay in a place should you stay for just one night and move on should you stay for a week each time you know people only have 7 1014 days of travel time so they have to figure out how to balance seeing as much as possible what have we what do you think I think the bare minimum quantity of nights that you should stay at one specific location bare minimum is two nights one night is not enough time and that is because travel time you have to factor in travel time so let's say you know you're in one place and you want to go to the next place and it's gonna take you four hours to get there and let's say you get out us we normally would get out like um we would arrive at the location by two and so everything all the sites boughs and usually around five so you really only have three hours to kind of see anything for that one day and then you would check into hotel you would sleep and then you would have to if you were only staying one night and have to go to the next place you would not have any time to see the city the next day because then you'd have to move on to the next location so you have to stay a minimum of two nights if you really want to see a place not to mention the feeling in travel is to enjoy your travels to explore more to be adventurous or whatever it is the reason that you're gonna be there is if you're constantly moving from one hotel to the next hotel to the next one cell to the next hotel you're gonna feel rushed you're gonna feel harried you're gonna feel chaotic you're not gonna have a chance to settle in and feel your vacation so yeah you definitely want to stay at least two nuts some places warrant more three and four some places you might get bored at three and four it really depends on what you also want to do from those cities again the day trip idea or maybe the city itself for us I'll give you a personal example we went to the Cotswolds we stayed in the Cotswolds in two different locations of just just the one number nines that's toe on the wall honestly for us it was very pretty it was very nice but we really could have just driven right on through it and stopped along the way in the different towns and then ended up in Cheshire to meet our friends but that said if you're a slow traveler and if you're a hiker and if you're nature lover the Cotswolds is an area of outstanding natural beauty it's an a oh and b2 designation from the British government steam blah blah blah people go there and they use those little ski pole things and they go hiking and and if you want to be out in nature the consoles is a great place to do so it really depends on again your travel style your desires your opinions etc etc London we stayed for one day yeah huge mistake no I think I've talked about this before we're from New York we figured London New York whatever been there done that the difference is yes they have probation shows yes they have restaurants yes they have a first class and everything bla bla bla but they also have you know thousand years of history in New York has two hundred about 400-500 but it's significantly more history there was a hell of a lot of things that we missed that we would have loved to have seen so that was a mistake staying there only one night so some place you've stayed too long some places we stayed too short that's the that's somewhat some of the game but um we'll never do that London thing again just one night is just too short so um what else we have what other what is a perk for day chirping I don't know if you want to just go through a list of perks but well actually so what you really have to do is kind of look in yourself and kind of say how how many what do I want to do and how many days is it really going to take in order to accomplish those things and that's really going to help you kind of decide how many days you want to stay in this particular location and also then you have to say well do I want to do any day trips from that location and that would also then add on additional nights so going forward now what is the benefit between day-tripping versus since hopping so I personally like city hopping more so than I like day tripping um I don't like the waste of time like we went up to Berlin we were with our friends Rachel Pascale and we date ripped up the hammer it's a two and a half hour drive now they were generous beyond belief to drive us there we went and we spent the day together we drove back but I was five hours in a car five hours lost that's a lot of time so I'm not a big fan of day-tripping for that reason yes there are times when it's 45 minutes away like we went to Dachau and that was a 45-minute ride that's probably for me a good kind of a day trip so I think the length of time that you lose to travel is a huge factor to me whether I'm gonna city hop or whether I'm gonna day trip right well another reason why you would want to date versus city hop is like I wouldn't want to have spent more time in Dachau that was a sufficient amount of time for me so for me to actually then go city hop and spend the night in Dachau or two nights in Dachau wouldn't have made any sense for me I would wanted to stay in Munich and day trip to Dachau like we did so that would be a benefit to day-tripping is if the area that you actually want to go see it's not really a place that you would want to spend more than one day yet it also depends I think on lines now if you're smart and you do a lot of things in advance or if you buy city passes and there's there are ways around them but let's say you go to Paris and you want to do the Eiffel Tower and you haven't planned in advance you're standing on the line for two hours yeah so if you're only staying in that town for one night tonight and you spend all your time at the Louvre at the Eiffel Tower each one has a two-hour line you're wasting a day's worth just standing in lines so you really can't stay in a town whether that's a day trip or a city how you can't stay anywhere they're so short that's got a lot of things to see and do in a very popular and that are gonna have lines it's places that don't have lines that are not as popular that are off the beaten path like let's say you go to garmisch-partenkirchen it's pretty well-known place but most people don't go there they go to Munich so when you're down there no we didn't have any lines for the the ski lift thing that took us to the top of the Zugspitze it was really was even no lines or restaurants everything was kind of quiet it was like a regular town so how busy how much the town or city has to offer how popular it is with other people who's going to make a big difference as to how long you stay in place so what else again well let's talk about the benefits of date tripping vs. city hopping on packing so if you day trip and you stay in one hotel for many days you don't have to pack and unpack so you know but if you keep moving from city to city you have to pack and unpack are you living out of your bag right there no so um one other benefit for day tripping if you stay in the same place you you kind of get to know your surroundings you get to know the cafe's that you like and say oh there's a grocery store over there whereas if you're moving from city to city you have to kind of read familiarize yourself with everything and you might not actually have time to develop favorites because you're not really there for that much so you also won't be able to get to know the locals right um when again when we were in Garmisch we actually stayed in Garmisch for them across the bridge over to partition and we went to a an Irish pub of all places and we met a guy there from Ireland who's living in Germany working in behind bar and what was cool is that you could go back now cuz he's staying there a few days you can go back and hang out that bartender like you get to know some of Lucas and he knows the locals so he can introduce you to some other folks and you start to get that real local feeling like as if you live there living as a local that's not something that's gonna happen if you're in a place for a few hours and you move on very hard to meet people when we were in them in the Cotswolds we got very lucky we went to several pubs grab a beer just want to check them out and I open called one where we struck up a conversation we actually struck up a conversation with two other Americans yeah younger than us that we're traveling through and then we saw them in the next pound again he's kind of funny they were following the same but then some of the other older men that were there they were getting in violence so that was a kind of a communal thing I was really cool it made you feel like that's what it would feel like to be drinking in an English pub that's again not gonna happen if you're like when we were in London we went in had a drink and left like it was it was nice the other ones better for me so it's the familiarity side we talked about day-tripping not necessarily warranting more day right um places that don't have a lot to offer so you what day trip there versus staying there for long periods of time I talked about the round trip the time that it took to get to dock out for 45 minutes versus Hamburg so the only other thing I would I would think of I think we covered most of our big reasons is the expense we wrapped our brains to think of how city hopping would cost you more you really couldn't figure out a way that would the real expense is the day-tripping so that's part of the reason why you would city hop is to save yourself some money the trip to Dachau costs the boss talk cost the Train cost whatever it cost if you're in Dublin there it's like a bicycle wheel all the spokes go out and everything leads to Dublin but if you're in somewhere else and you want to go to somewhere else you have to come back through Dublin to get there you're making this big triangle situation or you're hiring a private driver who's taking private local roads and you know that's 30 miles an hour it takes forever so you have to think of the expense involved in day-tripping trains from unic salzburg or how much was $75 each or something like that so if your way right so you know hundred fake the granite Allah's just to get over to Salzburg you might want to consider heading the Salzburg staying there for a couple nights and then going somewhere else after that so there's a there's an expense to date trucking that doesn't really exist with city hoping what else yeah do you have an opinion do you have a preference or is it really each situation zipper I think every situation is different like I would I mentioned I would not want to spend two nights in the town surrounding or the town's surrounding noise constant castle I mean we went we saw it and then we went back to our home location or something yeah so but but I also say that you know the more Laura and I travel the slower we're becoming as travelers like we want to slow down and experience things more I think that's gonna lend itself to both city hopping and day tripping we're gonna go consider Center City but within each city we're gonna day trip slow down and go on short of trips if if the trip is two hours away we'll probably just go there that's from a city on perspective but I would have loved to have stayed in the englischer garten again you know go down into Munich there's a place called the englischer garten that has the Chinese tower there and around that is this famous beer garden I loved it I got to go there once for an hour I would love to have gone back ya know when we were hanging out with Mike and Carrie and we went up to Liverpool I would like to have spent more time in Liverpool we buy time we got up there took the train up there walk around the city although hung out and did some nightlife and came back home that was it yes Liverpool does not warrant a day trip but that's why we we choose to slow down we're we're choosing to slow down too the more we travel anyway so that yeah that's that I think that does wrap it up I mean that's our thoughts on it if you guys have any thoughts on it definitely feel free to shoot me an email Scott at my extraordinary adventures comm check it out on us out on Facebook and Twitter and all the rest of that and you can carry on the conversation there as well if you do email me send me your first name your last name no noise I don't want to see your last name on there where you're from and I'll definitely give you a shout-out and read your email on the air but if that's it I think we're good for this egg yeah I hope this helped yeah I hope it helps I mean and if you didn't give me give me a call we'll be happy to plan it for you it might make your life a lot easier so that is the show for today I hope you enjoyed it again reach out to me let me know if you did if you didn't if there's things you'd like to add or change and please do me a favor and spread the word we're trying our best to get good free travel information out there in the world and the more people that we can touch the more you know we can share it's just a way of giving back for us so please spread the word all right I guess that's it we'll catch you on the next episode of VA radio stay tuned for that and for now bye everybody ah ciao [Music] you [Music] 

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